


everything you've ever been

by JBS_Forever



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Comic Book Science, Fix-It of Sorts, Time Travel Fix-It, don't look too hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21535618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JBS_Forever/pseuds/JBS_Forever
Summary: Peter blinks at him. “I'm not following,” he says. “What does that mean exactly?”“Itmeans,” says Strange. “That if we do this right, I think we could save Stark. I think we could save everyone.”- - -In which Peter falls through time and space, travels between dimensions, and each dimension is a different story on ao3.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Stephen Strange, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 41
Kudos: 502





	everything you've ever been

**Author's Note:**

> **PLEASE READ**
> 
> This is based on "The Amazing Spider #500 - Happy Birthday, Part Three" (and as such, most of Strange's lines are ripped right from it, so credits to J. Michael Straczynski). In that comic, Peter has to travel through his timeline and re-fight all his villains to get back to save the present. Because MCU Peter hasn't had a lot of villains yet, I thought – you know what would be fun? What if Peter traveled through dimensions? And you know what would be even more fun, what if those dimensions were different stories on ao3?
> 
> Thus, this fic was born :)
> 
> [Check out the amazing cover art my friend Ann made for this story!! ](https://you-still-have-time.tumblr.com/post/189281347887/everything-youve-ever-been-by-jbsforever-i)
> 
> ( **TW for panic attacks. Please let me know if I should tag anything else.** )

“Am I dead?” Peter asks, a hand held in front of his face, the memory of light still burned behind his eyes.

It's been a long day.

A moment ago, he was on the battlefield. A moment ago, he saw the run-down van they were racing toward, saw the six stones reflecting off the red of the Iron Man suit. There was a flash of white, blinding and opaque, swallowing everything whole, and then Peter was falling, as if the ground had given out beneath him.

He wiggles his fingers now and sees nothing. No nails, no knuckles, no palm. He tries to touch his face and can't find it.

“That's … weird,” he says. “Is this Heaven? Seems kind of dark for Heaven. Did someone forget to pay the electricity bill?”

“This is not Heaven,” says a voice, and Peter would jump if he wasn't so disconnected from his body. “And you're not dead.”

Someone else is here with him – wherever _here_ is.

“Dr. Strange? Is that you?”

“Yes,” Strange says. The sound comes from everywhere around Peter, far away and close at the same time. Why can't he see him?

“Am I blind?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” Peter asks. “Because I think I might be blind.”

“Stop talking,” Strange says.

“Okay, but –”

“ _Stop talking_.”

Peter falls silent. The agitation isn't surprising. Strange was annoyed with him the moment they met on the spaceship. Annoyed with him, with Tony, with Star-Lord and his ragtag team. Strange was distracted. Strange saw the future and told them one in fourteen million. One chance they win, one chance they end this. And then Peter turned to dust and woke up five years later.

Did they lose?

“Dr. Strange?”

Strange mutters something under his breath, foreign words in a language Peter has never heard before. Slowly, light starts to form in the dark, blue and red and gold outlining shapes. A head, a face.

“Be quiet,” Strange says. “I need to concentrate. It's taking all my power to construct our physical forms here.”

“Where _is_ here?” Peter asks, and backtracks quickly. Quiet. Right. “Sorry,” he says. “Oops. Sorry. Again.”

The colors filter in stronger. Strange comes to life in front of him, an eerie, glow-in-the-dark painting at first, becoming more human by the second. His cloak drapes across his shoulders. The fine details of his facial hair fill in.

“No need to stare,” Strange says.

“Huh? I wasn't –” Peter pauses. “Oh, wait! I can see you.” He lifts his hand up. Ten gloved fingers, just like normal. He stretches each one and breathes a sigh of relief. “Hey, thanks.”

“Don't thank me yet,” Strange says, and sticks an arm out to gesture vaguely at the vast expanse. He sounds unamused, tired, when he says, “Spider-Man, welcome to the void,” and Peter has to take a moment to figure out if he's joking.

“The void?”

“The long precreation hesitation which existed before there was time and space, and remains forever outside them both.”

Peter stares at him, blank, numb with surprise. “We're outside time and space?”

“That is correct,” Strange says. “It appears that when Stark used the gauntlet, the stones created a rift in the universe. I wasn't able to reach you in time before you fell.”

“You fell with me?”

“Indeed.”

“Wow. Okay.” Peter swallows. The stillness around them is thick, the feeling of something shifted and hundreds of bodies no longer with him, still back on the battlefield. Titan to the compound to the void all in the span of minutes. Peter is having a hard time processing.

“Uh, thanks for trying?” he says. “So, um, what – what do we do now?”

“We stop talking,” says Strange, and waves a circle of neon orange. “I need to focus.” He mutters the foreign words again, chanting them, picking up sound and speed as he goes. Everything gets brighter. Electricity tingles across Peter's skin, across the hairs on the back of his neck. The sense that warned him of danger on Titan is quiet. Peter braces himself anyway.

The light explodes. Behind closed eyes, he still sees it, but it's a rapid thing, fleeting. It's gone like it came, and it takes Peter a few seconds to clear his vision.

“Whoa,” he says. “Did we do it? Are we –?” His words catch in his throat as the ground settles. His heart sinks. “No. No, no, no.”

They're back on the battlefield, but the aliens and the spaceships are gone. All across the debris-filled terrain, heroes are kneeling, heads bowed in silence. Someone is crying. Tony Stark, lifeless and not breathing, sits propped against a slab of concrete.

“Hey, watch out!”

Peter whirls around, and he comes face to face with – a wall? He leaps back to avoid a guy on a bike soaring past, and hears him shout, “Get out of the street, jackass.”

The street? Peter opens his mouth and shuts it. The wall is one part of a large skyrise, and somehow they're in the city, glowing billboards and restaurant signs perched high against a dark backdrop.

“How – I– what?”

“It's as I said,” Strange says from beside him. “We are outside time and space. I was unable to return us to both simultaneously.” He looks over his shoulder, and Peter does too. The battlefield is there, Tony is there. “You are seeing the past before the war, and the moments after Stark used the gauntlet.”

“But it's not –” Peter runs the back of his hand over his mouth. A car horn blares. “Is it real? Is he really –?” He can't finish the thought. His eyes are stinging. He thinks he might be sick.

“It is a possible future, yes, but right now we are in the moment between moments,” Strange says, and pauses, thoughtful, tilting his head. “Between moments. Tell me, have you heard of Schrödinger's cat?”

Peter ignores the shift of movement behind them. There's another person crying nearby, and he feels it echo in his chest, feels it like it's his own. He gives a jerky nod. “Yeah, sure. He put a cat in a box and there was a fifty-fifty chance poison was released, but until you opened the box to find out, the cat was both alive and dead.”

“Exactly,” Strange says. “Once you open the box, the quantum possibilities collapse into one reality. A live cat or a dead cat.”

“Okay?”

“We are between moments,” Strange says again, emphasizing a point Peter doesn't understand. “We may even be able to affect what happens when the quantum possibilities collapse into one reality. _Our_ reality. Our future.”

Peter blinks at him. “I'm not following,” he says. “What does that mean exactly?”

“It _means_ ,” says Strange. “That if we do this right, I think we could save Stark. I think we could save everyone.”

One in fourteen million, he said. Did he see this too? Did he know they'd end up here? Peter stares at Tony, abstracted and dying, and he stares at the city, bright and alive. The past and the future right in front of him. It is Schrödinger's cat, and until they open the box, they can fix this. All they have to do is make sure they don't let that moment become the future.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I'm in. How do we –”

“Hey, watch out!”

Peter turns to the warning, but he's too late. The guy on the bike has reset locations, coming at him from the same place as before, like some kind of scene on loop, and Peter isn't expecting it, doesn't move out of the way in time. The guy crashes into him, and he falls backward, falls and falls and falls, and hits the ground hard.

The sound of a cannon startles him back to reality. He jolts into a sitting position, suspended in a moment of confusion, his head aching and his ears quiet. The city and the battlefield are gone, replaced now with bookshelves, big and beautiful, ethereal in the way they surround him.

“What the hell?” he murmurs, and calls out, “Hello? Dr. Strange?”

No one answers. It feels wrong here, like he's in the eye of the storm waiting for something to happen. A nagging sensation in his stomach tells him he's gotta go, he needs to leave this place. But where is he? How does he get back?

He scrambles to his feet and finds his way to the exit, past chandeliers and rows of tables and endless windows. Outside, there's another explosion. He keeps moving. He runs by blown-out storefronts, streets covered with debris, a city abandoned in the midst of tragedy. Something tugs at his memory, begging him to remember as flashes of broken images dance before his eyes.

“Whoa,” Peter says. “I'm getting serious deja vu.”

He's never been here before, he's sure, but it's familiar. When he looks hard enough, it almost feels like a place he's dreamed of. It almost feels like –

“Wait a second,” he says, coming to a stop. “Am I – am I in the Hunger Games?”

And it's strange, discombobulating, but Peter _remembers_. Faintly, because these memories must not be his own, but he's remembering something.

“Jesus, my life is weird,” he says. Up ahead, standing in front of one of the destroyed stores, is another familiarity.

Michelle.

She's different than the person he saw days ago – years ago, now, he guesses – but he would recognize her anywhere. She sees him before he gets too close, and she turns, wide-eyed, and raises her hands.

“Peter! Peter, stop!”

Relief eases the coil twisting his insides. His feet keep moving. If Michelle is here, maybe he wasn't the only one to fall through the rift. Maybe they all ended up somewhere else.

“Stop!” Michelle says. “Stop!”

Peter slows, and Michelle points to the ground, frantic, her concern keeping him still.

“There's a pod,” she says. There's a pod and she needs to help him around it. A pod, which explodes if you step on it, which Peter knows because he remembers this. He remembers being here. Remembers he's in a district – no, he's in an _arena_ inside a district, and there are people watching him through cameras, waiting to see what he'll do.

“Okay, yup,” he says. “Definitely in the Hunger Games.”

Michelle eases him around the pod. She reaches for his hands, and Peter sees everything – the fight he's about to have with another contestant in the games, the illusions, the explosion. Peter sees everything like a flashback. He sees how this ends – not just this moment but the entire game.

He reaches for Michelle too, but she's gone when he looks up, and he stumbles through empty, black space, unsteady. He's back in the void and he's alone.

“Holy shit,” he whispers.

“Spider-Man.”

Peter looks up. “Dr. Strange?”

“I apologize for the delay,” Strange says. His voice is stagnant in the dark. Peter waits for him to appear again. “It's has taken all my power to find you. You've gone too far down the timeline for me to come to you.”

“The timeline?” Peter asks, breathing a laugh. “I'm pretty sure I was just in the Hunger Games. How the hell did I end up there? And better yet, why did I remember being there? It was like I'd lived it before.”

“Because you have,” Strange says. “In a way. You are outside time and space. That means you're outside dimensions.”

“Dimensions?”

“Universes,” Strange explains. “Multiple versions of you exist across multiple planes. You must have fallen into one of those dimensions. You remember living it because a version of you _has_ lived it.”

“Like parallel universes? Are you saying string theory is real? That's insane. That's amazing. That changes the entire way we –”

“Spider-Man,” Strange snaps, and Peter falls silent. “We have bigger priorities.”

“Right, sorry,” says Peter. “What do you want me to do?”

“You'll have to come to me. You'll have to come back up the timeline, back through the dimensions until you reach the present.”

Peter frowns in the darkness, unsure whether Strange knows it or not. “Okay, sure. Uh, how, exactly?”

“I've sent the Spell of Becoming in your direction. You should see it any second now.”

There's no missing it. The spell is bright in the void, a blue line of magic traveling toward him. It hums like static, pricking at Peter's nerves. “I see it.”

Strange says, “Let it flow into you and bring you forward through time. Follow my voice and never let go.”

“Never let go,” Peter repeats. “Like Rose in Titanic, except I actually mean it. Got it.”

“If we succeed, you will return to yourself in the moments before Stark uses the gauntlet. You must find a way to keep him from dying.”

Peter chokes. “Uh, that's kind of a lot of pressure? How am I supposed to do that?”

“You'll know.”

“I'll know? How will I –?” The spell hits him in the chest, and Peter cries out in surprise, the force of the thing shooting him back. It swells, warm and loud, and Peter goes flying, landing in a heap on the ground.

“Ow,” he says. “Could have been more gentle. Jeez.”

Someone laughs. Peter pushes himself to his knees, and – oh. This is own timeline. This is Germany, the tarmac, and Ant-Man has become Giant-Man, and he's just thrown Rhodey and Peter needs to catch him. He races toward the loading ramp.

“I got him!” he calls, and shoots out a web, attaching to the Iron Patriot suit. Easy. He hits into a truck and tips it over, using it as momentum to yank Rhodey back from the plane he's about to hit. Peter knows how this goes. He has to stop Ant-Man. He swings around his legs, wrapping them with webs. Tony and Rhodey go high, and Peter is ready this time. He just has to duck. He has to avoid the swing.

“Yes!” he yells in triumph. “That was awesome!”

But he doesn't get out of the way. A big, beefy arm slams into him, and Peter careens into a pile of boxes, rolling across pavement.

His vision blacks out. It _hurts_ , and it's in this moment he understands. He's not just visiting these memories, he's living them. He can be injured. And if he can be injured, he almost definitely can be killed.

“Follow my voice,” Strange says.

Peter opens his eyes. He's no longer on the tarmac, no longer outside. He's in some kind of basement and he's chained to a chair and this isn't his own universe but he doesn't know which one it is either.

“Okay,” he says, and tries to wrestle free of his restraints. They hold strong. “Great. How am I supposed to get out of this? Uh, hey, Strange, can you give me a hand or something?”

Strange doesn't answer. Peter blows out air.

“Cool. Thanks.” He struggles again, stopping only at the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs and the feeling of heat at the base of his skull screaming at him. This can't be good. Why can't Peter remember? Is he supposed to know all these versions of himself?

He searches through his memory, anxious and annoyed, as three men step into the room. They're familiar in a way Peter hopes is good but can feel in his bones is not.

“Good morning, Peter,” one says, and Peter almost laughs.

“Justin Hammer?” he says. “Seriously? That's just fantastic. Kidnapped by Justin Hammer.”

It's not a joking matter, Peter knows. He remembers it as soon as he says it. He remembers the hours of torture he's about to face – Hours? Days? How long was he here?

He closes his eyes. “Think,” he mutters to himself. “What do I do? What do I do?” The pain of Germany is still fresh. Peter can die here. He can't stay.

Metal presses against his side, light, the sharp edge of a blade. His eyes snap open just in time to see the man in front of him crumple. It's not Justin Hammer anymore, but still Peter is restrained, kidnapped, made into an experiment.

“Oh my god,” he says. “ _Oh my god_. Does my life suck in all these universes?”

HYDRA agents. He's been taken by HYDRA agents, and he's bloody and bruised, the ache of each wound creeping up on him. If he can keep going, if he can find the next place in his timeline, he might be able to stop the pain before it gets worse. A working theory, at best, but he has to try.

He shifts against his bonds. From the rafters jumps a man in all black, a rifle draped across his arm. Peter recognizes him right away from his own universe.

“Bucky?” he asks. Bucky is wild, long hair a mess, face cold and expressionless. The last Peter had seen of him, Bucky was Sergeant Barnes, fighting alongside him on the battlefield. This Bucky is different. This Bucky is someone Peter feels comfortable calling Bucky – just, not quite yet in this universe, it seems.

Bucky gets a grip of Peter's bindings and breaks them apart with his metal arm. Not vibranium. Not here. Peter pushes himself up. He goes to take a step, but he's stayed too long in this place and the pain in his side is sharp and nauseating. He drops to his knees, breathes deep through his nose.

“Follow my voice,” Strange says.

Peter groans and sits back on his haunches. He's in a self-storage unit. There's a window on the far wall, sunlight beaming through, and beside him something warm, soft.

“A dog?” he asks. The dog perks up, snuggling close. _Tilly_ , his brain supplies. Her name is Tilly.

“Hi,” he says, scratching her behind the ears. “Hi, Tilly. Listen, I'm super sorry, but I can't stay. I have to get back to my timeline and save the universe. You know, just some classic first world problems. Everyday occurrences.”

The Spell of Becoming pulls at Peter's limbs, urging him on. “And there's my cue,” he says. “See ya later, Tilly. And in case anyone hasn't told you lately, you're a good girl!”

Tilly wags her tail. Time is a fragile thing, and Peter would stay with her longer if he could. But the past and present are before him. He needs to get home before they become one.

He opens the door, and right away everything feels wrong. He's stepping into a hallway in Avengers Headquarters and the entire building is whole. This isn't his world. He knows it. This is his and May's apartment building, miles away, in ruins. This is his entire street, almost the entire city, destroyed. This is Thanos's army on Earth, lacking the driving force to keep them from wiping out Manhattan.

And Pepper is here. Pepper is here and she's dying, she's the only one left, and Peter can save her this time. He can save her and her baby and they can live. He just has to be faster than he was before.

“Ms. Potts,” he says, bursting into the front lobby, and is met with a ghostly silence. Adrenaline courses through his veins, making him feel sick. He takes the elevator up. He walks through empty rooms – the kitchen, the living area. Everything is scattered with shards of broken glass, upturned furniture, scorch marks on the wall.

“Hello?” he calls.

Warped weapons line the floor of the gym. Peter inches closer to investigate and his spider-sense screams. He staggers with it, hands clapped over his ears to block the sudden ringing in his head. Like Strange's spell, a force knocks him off his feet, hard.

Peter gasps and the air catches in his lungs. “Black Widow?”

Natasha pins him to the floor, one hand wrapped around his throat like a vice, and, yes, Peter remembers now. Some kind of toxin released into the compound. They'd all gone insane – Natasha and Clint, Thor and Sam, Steve and Tony. They'd all attacked him.

Natasha presses a gun to his temple. It's not functional, but she tries to fire it anyway, and Peter's stomach churns at the thought.

“Just so you know,” he says, using her moment of distraction with the malfunctioning gun to twist himself out of her hold, “I may not be your Peter, but that still hurts my feelings.”

He clambers to his feet, cringing as Natasha screeches and lunges after him. He has to get to the workshop. He has to talk to Bruce. Bruce, who is far away, who can activate the defensive measures and drop the steel walls around the compound to keep the rogue Avengers inside. Peter got trapped here with them before. He won't make that mistake again.

He rushes down the hall, but Natasha is close behind, and Peter has forgotten about Clint. There are years between him and the Peter in this universe. Years of training and experience he doesn't have yet. It shows. He's struggling to keep Natasha off, and Clint is there, jabbing an arrow into Peter's thigh with his own hands because he can't shoot it, his bowstring is broken, and Peter has forgotten just how much everyone wants to kill him here.

He yelps in pain. “Mother fu–” he starts, and rips the arrow free. Distantly, he hears someone scream. Black dots sprinkle across his vision.

 _Don't pass out_ , he tells himself, _Don't pass out. Don't pass out_.

It is something to focus on, so Peter keeps chanting it, keeps his attention on saying conscious as he tries to figure out where to go next. Past memories direct his attention up. The vents. He has to get to the vents. He climbs the wall, the ceiling, just out of reach of Natasha and Clint, and slips inside.

“Follow my voice,” Strange says.

Peter crawls, desperate and verging on panic. The vent gets smaller and darker as he goes, winding through the building until his hands hit water and he can't go any further. His breathing comes out in sharp wheezes.

He's back in his timeline. It's the night of the dance and the warehouse has collapsed and Peter is under the rubble. Tons of steel bear down on him.

He says, whining, “Give me a break.” He wants to cry. He'd barely been able to lift this the last time and he hadn't just been stabbed with an arrow by a crazed out Avenger then. How is he supposed to do it now, when he's so tired, so off-kilter?

“Follow my voice,” Strange says.

Above him, somewhere, Toomes is hijacking Tony's jet. In his heart, Peter knows he has to stop him. He knows the bad things that will happen if he doesn't. And they _will_ happen.

“All right, come on,” he mutters, steadying himself. There's no time to be a baby. “Come on, Peter. You did it before, you can do it again. This is when it counts.” He braces his hands against the pillars above him and pushes, straining under the weight. “You can't give up. Come on, Spider-Man! This isn't a memory. You're here and you're living it. Mr. Stark needs you. He needs you now and he needs you in the future. Come on!”

The pile shifts, and Peter pushes harder, pushes and pushes until it parts, until he can see the sky. Through the hole at the top shines the rusted metal of a ladder, and Peter climbs to it, follows it up through a fire escape that leads him onto a rooftop. A cool breeze nips at his bare face. On the street below, dozens of costumed New Yorkers mill about.

“Is it Halloween?” he asks. It must be. There are bags of candy in children's hands, and two guys dressed in Freddy and Jason masks are trying to steal a car. Peter has always hated the way the city shifts into madness during holidays – on this night especially.

“No rest for the wicked,” he says.

He activates his mask and swings into the alley, mindful of his injured leg. Already it's starting to feel better, but the memory of pain seers through him at his landing. He adds “rip an arrow out of my leg” to the list of things he never wants to do again.

“Hmm. All right,” he says. “I kind of remember how this goes. Let's see.” He taps his chin and jabs a finger at the man dressed as Jason. “You have a switch blade, because you haven't joined the twenty-first century yet. And you –” Peter points at Freddy, and Jason, knife in hand, lunges at him. Peter sidesteps him, catching him by the wrist. “Excuse me, that's rude. I was talking.” With a little more force than he'd used the last time, he flings discount Jason into the bumper of a car.

“Oh!” he says, as Freddie throws a punch. “Now I remember what your deal is.” And he lands a kick to Freddy's stomach, webbing him to the wall. He thinks, _wait, that was too easy_. Something else happens here, doesn't it?

And then it does. But it's not Jason like before. It's a mugger, and he says, “Spider-Man, _knife_ to see you,” and Peter's thoughts shift from confusion to humor, because he recognizes this pun and if he's being honest, even as the blade disappears into his side, it's still funny.

“Shit, ow,” he says. “The puns got me again.” He's at least got the upper hand enough to remember how the mugger moves. He shoots a series of webs to restrain him in the place Freddie was a moment ago.

“Follow my voice,” says Strange.

“Yeah, yeah.” Peter presses his palm against the wound. Blood leaks between his fingers. “Oh boy. This isn't good.”

He has to get to the next universe. It's a daunting idea. He has no idea how far away he is from the present, and Strange is too quiet. Peter wonders if he knows what's happening. He wonders if Strange is witnessing everything along with him.

“Okay,” he manages, tripping his way to the entrance of the alley. He tastes copper on his tongue. “Keep going. I can – I have to get back. I just have to get back.”

A shoulder knocks against his, spinning him halfway around. He catches himself on the bricks of a shop. “Sorry, Spider-Man!” calls a voice as the person it belongs to disappears into the crowd huddled in the center of Times Square, everyone squashed behind police barricades.

Peter shields his eyes against the onset of multi-colored lights. “What is this?” he asks, but gets his answer when a man with a fishbowl on his head emerges from a cloud of mist. He's remembering faster, which is good, he thinks. It's good that it only takes a split second for him to name this man as Mysterio, and another second to outline the information he needs.

He takes off on foot, shoving his way through the gathered crowd. He doesn't have time for politeness. Murmured swears and noises of surprise fill his ears, and he reaches the officers on scene, panting, “You guys gotta get everyone out of here.” The injuries are taking a toll. Peter is exhausted, depleting.

Strange says, “Follow my voice.”

Peter says, “Seriously, you gotta get everyone away. This guy –” Before he can finish, the flash bomb goes off. Mysterio pulled this on him last time and pulls it on him this time too. Peter is blinded. He gets hit once, twice, and curls around himself to protect from the third. When the final blow doesn't come, he scrubs at his eyes until they clear.

The world goes still. Not silent, not really. There are crickets and frogs, and the grass beneath his shoes crunches with his steps. He's not in Times Square anymore. Must be trapped in one of Mysterio's illusions, no doubt, except this isn't familiar. This cemetery, this night. The moon is low and big, and there's only one headstone here.

Peter inches toward it, curious.

 _ **Here lies May Parker**_ , it reads. **_Loving wife and aunt_.**

It takes a few beats for Peter's mind to catch up. His fingers trace numb outlines of the words before he realizes what he's doing.

“Oh god,” he whispers, tears thick in his throat. “May. I'm … I'm so sorry. Oh god.” He rests his palm against the stone. He doesn't understand. What could have gone so wrong? Why aren't the memories coming to him this time?

“It can't be real,” he says, scrubbing at his eyes. “It's not real. This isn't – is this a dream?” No matter how hard he tries, he doesn't remember. How can he not remember May dying?

His chest rises and falls too fast. The ground shakes with him, trembling, opening up. Another headstone rises to his left. **_May Parker_**. Another to his right. **_May Parker_**. They circle around him, springing from the ground, more and more and more. He feels her dying over and over, in multiple universes.

It's too much. He stumbles away and turns, nearly colliding into another headstone.

 _ **Here lies Tony Stark**_ , the new one reads. **_Loving father and friend_**.

Peter steps back, gasping. Both May and Tony, gone. Dead. What has he done?

“Follow my voice,” Strange says.

Peter searches frantically for an exit, and there, in the middle of the cemetery, appears a door. He does the only acceptable thing he can in this situation. He runs. He doesn't care where it leads, just anywhere but here. He twists the knob too hard and flings forward into – a supply closet? He knocks over a broom, gets his foot caught in a cleaning bucket.

“Peter,” someone calls. “Time for breakfast!”

Peter untangles himself from the mess and sneaks closer to the door across from him. It's propped open a few inches, shining light into the dark of the closet. He peers inside.

“Pete, you're gonna be late! Up and at em'!”

“I'm coming, I'm coming.”

Still reeling with emotion, Peter isn't prepared for what's before him. The familiar warmth of the dining room, the wooden chairs Ben refurnished to match the table. This is his old apartment, the first one Peter lived in after his parents died, all the way up until he and May moved.

And Ben is here, sitting at that stupid table he loved so much, scanning through the paper. A younger version of Peter comes bustling up to him, one hand stuck in the arm of his sweater, the other pushing his glasses up his nose.

This is the day it happened. This is the day Peter got bit by the spider, the day his life changed. And he's standing here watching. He can fix it. He can stop himself from leaving, or make himself leave just a little later. He won't be Spider-Man, but Ben won't die.

“Dr. Strange?” he says, his voice weird and foreign to his ears. “Can you hear me?”

Strange is quiet, and then, almost reluctantly, says, “Yes.”

“You said … you said we can save everyone. What about my uncle? Can we – could I bring him back with me?”

Strange sounds distant and drawn, like it's taking every inch of energy he has to converse. “I'm afraid not. I barely have the ability to pull you back. It would be impossible with someone else tagging along. Not to mention the complications that would arise by bringing back someone who is dead in your universe.”

“What happens then?” Peter asks. “If I change something? If I change this?” He motions toward where Ben is fixing the collar of younger Peter's shirt. His chest hurts.

“You will alter the rest of your current timeline. For better or for worse.”

Peter hears what he isn't saying. He bites hard on his lip and looks beside him. The closet is deeper than he thought, more like a hallway than anything else, and other doors are there too.

Peter steps away from his memory to check another. To see if something better waits. But when he opens this door, he's staring into the inside of a spaceship. He sees stars through the windshield, and he sees himself and Tony, curled behind the pilot's chair, pale, the air too thin, not enough oxygen to keep them alive. It's dizzying, paralyzing. He thinks of Tony back on the battlefield with his blank eyes.

He can't breathe.

He slams the door and tries a different one, his hands slippery with sweat. It's no better. He's looking at the same battlefield, except he's the one in the middle this time, he's the one with the gauntlet and he's about to slip it on. He's about to die.

He closes this door too. His ears are ringing. He wants to go home. He wants this to be over.

God, _he can't breathe_.

The third door opens to blackness and he goes through without thinking, hoping it will lead him back to the void where he can start over again. That's all he needs. To start over.

He claws at his throat. Something is there, thick, bulky, and with it comes the awareness of his surroundings. A small room shaped like a cell, no way to open the door that's closed behind him. There's a cot with a pillow and blanket, and it's all so impersonal, so stifling.

Memories strike him at once. He's in the raft. He's in a prison floating in the middle of the ocean.

“Of course I remember this,” Peter says, yanking at the collar. 

“Kid –” someone starts, but Peter pulls harder, ignoring the person and the echo of objections.

“Come on!” he yells in frustration, and then pain erupts in his body, the collar sending shocks through him, and he seizes, his muscles locking, his knees buckling. He lands face-down on the floor and gulps mouthfuls of air, waiting for it to stop.

“Follow my voice.”

He aches all over. The stab wound in his leg, the one in his side, still sticky with dried blood but no longer worrying, because apparently Peter was right, he just needed to get to the next universe before his injuries got worse.

He brings his arms up to cushion his head. He smells salt water.

“Follow my voice,” Strange says again.

Peter coughs into his elbow and bites back a sob. “I heard you. Just – leave me alone.”

"We are wasting time."

"I don't care."

“I know you are afraid,” Strange says, louder than he's been this entire time.

“I'm not afraid,” Peter says. “I'm just –” He rolls over and sits up. The collar is gone. He's in the middle of a body of water, but he's on a rocky surface and the waves are still. The sky twinkles. “What's the point? Nothing I do changes anything. I can't keep going, Dr. Strange. I can't save Mr. Stark. I can't save anyone.”

“You are not prone to self-pity,” Strange says. “Spider-Man, do you know what is the greatest gift anyone can receive in his lifetime?”

“No? What does that–”

“The greatest gift we can receive is to have the chance, just once in our lives, to make a difference," says Strange. "Do you understand how many gifts you have received? How many times you have made a difference? Enough for a hundred lifetimes, Peter.”

Peter deflates, picks at the seam of his webshooter. He told something like this to Tony once. _“When you can do the things I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you.”_

“It is your choice now,” Strange says. “But if you stop, all those times will be for nothing. All those people you saved will be for nothing. You became Spider-Man for a reason – to help people. So what do you want?”

Peter's life has never been fair. His parents, Ben, the bite. The world has thrown problem after problem at him, and it's not easy, it might never be, but if it was, Peter wouldn't be here. He wouldn't be who he is. 

Strange's outline forms in the sky, a reminder of guidance, of support, and Peter realizes: this is it. This is everything he fights for, day in and day out. The people he has helped and the people he _will_ help, in his own time and across all the universes. It's hard. It's hard and sometimes it hurts, and Peter wouldn't trade it for anything else.

“Okay.” He rises to his feet. He won't quit now. “How do I do this?”

Strange flickers in his view. “I will create a doorway. It will lead you back to the place you were before you got trapped in the cell. Go straight forward.” The door shapes itself in the middle of the rock Peter is on, building from the ground up. “After I finish, we won't have long before my spell breaks. This is using the last of my powers. Go forward and don't look back, Spider-Man. We still have time.”

Peter nods. The past and the future, for better or for worse. He is Spider-Man, and he always will be.

“Go,” Strange says.

Peter wishes he could tell Ben he's sorry, but he knows Ben doesn't blame him. He knows he never has. 

_Enough for a hundred lifetimes_.

He's going to change the world.

He turns the knob and charges back into the closet, to the end where an open door is waiting for him. On the other side, in a big, empty room, his villains, the foes from his own timeline. They gather around like they've been waiting for him, and Peter thinks maybe they have.

It's Toomes first, then the men on the ferry, the men in the van. There are people he doesn't recognize, whose names he knows. Electro and Scorpion and Walrus. “Walrus, seriously?” Peter takes punches and throws punches and he makes it out on the other side, his lip swollen and his nose bleeding.

But it's not over. Not yet.

He goes through the next door, and he plans to rush past, he does, but the sleek walls catch his attention and bring him to a halt. When he looks down at himself, he's dressed in a cloak, the colors familiar and startling.

“Wait, holy shit.” He grapples for the weight hanging from his belt and comes up with none other than a lightsaber. “Oh my god,” he says. “Am I a Jedi?” Careful, he presses the button to turn it on, and out shoots the blazing light, all sapphire and buzzing heat.

“I'm a Jedi!” He waves the lightsaber around and catches the bottom of his cloak, burning the material. “Whoopsie. These are a lot different when they're real.”

Across the training area, a door glows faintly.

“Follow my voice.”

“Sorry, my bad.” Peter shuts the lightsaber down. “I'm taking this with me.” He stuffs it back onto his belt and continues to the next dimension. It throws him out in an apartment he vaguely recognizes, and he runs through the place, frowning at the men he sees gathered there – Wade Wilson? It sounds like a name he knows. He cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of what they're looking at as he passes and tries to round back.

“Is that a Pikachu?!” he says, and thinks he might be yelling.

“Follow my voice.”

Wade turns to him. “Time traveling, are we?” he says. His mouth is half-amusement, half-impressed.

Peter's eyes go wide. “What?”

Pikachu makes the most adorable sound Peter has ever heard, and Peter gives Wade a nervous salute, slipping out of the room while he can. Wade calls after him, “Make good choices!” and Peter opens the next door he finds and comes out in the airport in Germany.

It's only now he thinks to check his belt, and he heaves a sigh of disappointment when he finds it empty, the cloak gone. “No fair.”

Groaning floats up from the floor beneath his. He hurries to the glass railing, peeking over the edge. Sam Wilson and Bucky are webbed near the bottom of the escalators, glaring up at him.

“Oh,” Peter says. “Uh, hi guys. Listen, I know we're really not on good terms right now, but I'm kind of in a hurry and –” Something latches onto his wrist – how did Peter forget this part? – and yanks him into the air, sends him crashing through the window. Peter twists, aiming blindly with his free hand, and connects to something solid but not steady.

A monster. Because, _of course_ a monster. One as tall as a building, a mix between an ape and something else, something more amphibious given that Peter is swinging from one of its tentacles. He latches on tight. The monster is standing in the middle of the river, and there's something attached to his leg, some kind of device Peter knows he has to get. A second tentacle swings at him and he grabs it.

“Just like climbing a tree,” he says, grunting as he's whipped around. He grabs onto another tentacle and the monster focuses his attention away from the shore and to Peter. Peter is too fast. He leaps for the device, but as soon as his hands are ripping it free, a pulse emits from inside.

It flings Peter back, and he slams into the water. The force knocks the wind from his lungs. Pressure pushes on each side of him. He kicks his legs, struggling against the rush of water, and breaks the surface, gasping.

“Not like a tree,” he chokes. He paddles for a moment, takes note of the new location. He's in a pool – an indoor pool, and his legs feel weird, welded together in a way, and – yup. Peter has a tail. A bonafide, couldn't-make-it-up-if-he-wanted-to tail.

“Dude, I'm a mermaid,” he says, flipping the tail. “A mer-man? Mer-person? Why is all the cool stuff happening now?”

“Follow my voice,” Strange says.

A hand wraps around the tip of his tail and wrenches him under water. He fights against it. His legs move separately again, and the hand latches onto his own, pulling him up, and he swims, reaching and reaching until his fingers grip dry land, and instead of a pool or a river, he's climbing out of a hole in the ground and he's back on the battlefield, back at the compound, and this is it.

Past and present, Schrödinger's cat. Tony is fighting Thanos and he doesn't have the last stone yet, he hasn't snapped.

Peter sprints. He shoots webs onto high pieces of debris. It all moves too slow, too fast. A one in fourteen million chance. Every universe and every version of himself and it has all led to this.

He sees the final stone go missing. He sees Tony's mouth moving, sees him lift his hand with the makeshift gauntlet, and then, a second before he can activate them, Peter touches down at his side, and Strange said he would know what to do, and somehow, Peter does. He lays his hand on Tony's shoulder.

And Tony snaps.

Everything turns white, blinding and opaque, just the same as before. Lightning, sharp and hot, zaps through him, ballooning in his limbs. It overwhelms him, drowns him in pain. Endless, encompassing. He's dying and dying and dying –

And then, just like that, it stops.

His ears vibrate with sound, muffled and incomprehensible. Peter's thoughts are fleeting. Did he do it? Did they win?

Someone touches his forehead, touches the pulse point at his throat. He peels open his eyes, blinking rapidly at the face hovering above him.

“C-Cap?” he rasps. One half of his body is on fire. The arm of his suit is ripped. Steve pushes down gently on his chest when he tries to sit up.

“Stay still, Queens,” he says. “Just relax for a minute.”

“W-what happened?”

“What happened?” Steve repeats, astonished. “I'd like to know the same. How the hell did you three get to Tony so fast? No one else even saw him get the stones.”

“Huh?” Peter rolls his head to the side. A couple feet away, Sam is crouched in front of Rhodey, talking in low tones, prodding at the dark mark on the side of Rhodey's neck. Beside them, Pepper sits on a cylinder block, her own helmet off, while Tony cups her cheeks.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter whispers, battle-shocked and confused, his mind working to catch up. “He's okay?”

“He is,” Steve says. “Thanks to you three. You were all touching him when he snapped. Luckily it looks like none of you were hurt too bad."

“We – what?” Had they all fallen through time and space somehow? Peter doesn't know.

Tony mutters something to Pepper and looks Peter's way, their gazes locking. Peter hears him when he says, “I'll be right back. Don't move. I mean it. You're grounded to that spot for all of eternity.”

“We'll see,” Pepper says.

Tony rolls his eyes. He makes it to Peter in half a second, kneeling next to Steve. The fingers on his right hand are dark, bloody and bruised. Broken, most likely. The rest of his armor is still in tact, so Peter can't see what other damage there is.

“Hey, kid,” Tony says.

Peter's voice wobbles. “Hey,” he says, and despite their protests, pushes his hands to the ground and heaves himself to a sitting position. Tony holds him there with a palm against his back.

“Did we win?” Peter asks.

“Yeah, kid. We won.”

“Good. That's – good.” Peter swallows against the taste of salt. He's so tired he could fall asleep right here and now.

Tony shakes his head. “How did you do that?” he asks, and Peter can't tell if he's disappointed or upset. “You could have died. I just – I don't get it. How did you know? How did any of you know?”

From Peter's other side, someone says, "I'm curious too."

Peter frowns. It's Strange. He's covered in dust and splatters of black liquid, one eyebrow raised, and he's – he's serious. He's really asking.

“You don't remember?” Peter says.

“Remember what?”

He laughs. It comes out fueled by hysteria, by every universe he visited and every version of himself across all the planes. He thinks, after all that, he deserves the right to be a little crazy.

He tips backward and sprawls across the ground. They did it. They opened the box and the cat is alive. They won. 

“You wanna hear a funny story?” he asks.

It's been a long day.

**Author's Note:**

> Phew! First of all, a big thanks to all the writers who gave me permission to visit their worlds. 
> 
> I reached out on tumblr to ask people for their favorite stories/writers and got a bunch of amazing suggestions. As such, all the stories in here were picked by you guys and that makes it so much more special to me! (also, I was able to talk to a handful of writers to ask for permission to use their stories, but then my tumblr decided to stop letting me message new people. So if your story is in here and you would rather it wasn't, please let me know and I'll work to write it out!)
> 
> [ Here is a masterlist of all the fics referenced!](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sI6xY_XpJbgV-EDC64YBVA-8woRltJg2mcKrKqy4gjs/edit?usp=sharing)  
>   
> This was a mess to write and I loved every second of it. There is gonna be a companion piece to this written from Tony's POV as he experiences something kind of similar. I'm not sure when it will be uploaded, but I'll probably add it on as a series to this when it's complete.
> 
> Thank you guys so much for reading! [Here's my tumblr, if you wanna hang out](https://jbsforever.tumblr.com/). Feedback is always appreciated <3


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